LED flashing kit

Nice job. Thanks for the tip.

It depends on your application needs. You can get the flashing leds in slow or fast blink and connect to a driver (power) circuit when you don't have the space for a board. search the auction site.

Do you still have an analog telephone line? I have a late 30's early 40's cradle type phone that still works, if you are interested in that look.

 We saw a homemade crossing signal that used tail light lenses. My girl asked if I could make it and I wasn't sure. Maybe a board like that with some type of activation button  would work?

 Maybe a set of beacon flashers mounted on top of a yard switcher could be another use for it?

Thanks for sharing.

 Funny how subjects come by at certain times.

That old phone has been around a long time. The date code on it reads 7/67. It works great.

If you want something for larger bulbs, you'd roll a similar circuit with larger components.  Here's one I found some time back in a train forum, looks like it would be suitable for larger stuff.  You can also go to larger transistors for even more light capacity.

My grandfather collected old phones, and I still have most of them, and when I had a landline I used some of them.  You should of seen the repairman's face when he came to fix my service when he saw it.  He wanted to blame the phone, but after I told him it works just fine, he finally started looking and found a bad cable outside the house.  Then he came in to try the phone, and boy he was surprised.  It looks like this.

But on to the flasher, I can see using it for a crossing signal with wires to the LEDs and the board under the layout or in a track side shed, or for blinking lights on a locomotive.

Very interesting post. Perhaps someone here (GRJ??) can offer a simple flasher circuit that will power 10 LED's that i have in a sign. have built one that uses a 2N3904 and 2N3906 transistor and a 47uf capacitor and a resistor. On battery DC it lasts a few minutes then stops working; on rectified DC it back feeds to everything else on that circuit. Any ideas? Thanks.

jackson

For your powered feedback issue, I'd think sticking a larger capacitor and regulator into the supply line would isolate things.  Can you post a schematic of what you have?

John, Unfortunately i don't know how to draw a schematic here but here's how it's wired:

1) Neg. (-) input to E on 2N3904 and onto Neg. (-) of string of LED's

2) B on 2N3904 to (-) of 47uf cap. and to 100K resistor and onto E of 2N3906

3) C on 2N3904 to B of 2N3906

4) Pos. (+) input to E on 2N3906

5) C on 2N3906 to (+) of 47uf cap and onto Pos. (+) of string of LED's

Input voltage is about 7.5 (a somewhat drained 9v battery).

A 22uf cap. gives a very fast but very dim LED flash while a 100uf cap. gives a very slow flash with enough brightness. Increasing the input voltage to 12 burns out the transistors. Dropping it to 3-4 and nothing lights. When i use 7.5 volts (DC)o from a line feeding other lighted buildings i get the back feed causing them to flash on and off dimly. Tried it with one of those little ($1.50 from China) adjustable regulators plus rectifier being fed from 18v (AC) track voltage and the same bizarre results.

Sinclair, that’s a cool phone.

We live in hurricane country (Homestead, FL) and it’s a good idea to have a land line phone, it will work for a few days on the phone Co. Central office battery power. We have two, one with push buttons and the red one for laughs.

Check out the phone number card on our red hot line phone.

Greg

A couple of mine have cards like that.  My grandpa had them all wired in a cabinet, so whenever anyone called his house, they all rang.  What a ruckus it made, but as kids we loved it.